"I'm sorry," Alistair said again. "You're not."

"The hell I'm not…!"

Fergus was pushing himself to his feet, gripping the tree he'd been leaning against as he did so. Nike instinctively reached out and caught hold of him, helping him hold his weight.

"It's ok, I think I can walk now."

"You're not far from the pass into Ostagar," Alistair told him. "If you go-"

"I know the way," Nike said, giving Alistair a scathing look.

"I'm sorry, Lady Cousland, but I don't think you understand," Alistair said. "If you go back it would be a death sentence."

"Oh, don't be dramatic," she scoffed, but Fergus seemed troubled.

"Death sentence? I don't understand-"

"Lord Cousland, I'm sorry to say that your younger sister has been conscripted into the Wardens. She seems unconvinced as to what that really means. Our fault probably-"

"I don't care what it means," she said coolly. "I did not agree-"

"Concept of 'conscripted' kind of gets away from you, don't it?" Daveth said. "Or you're being willful in ignorance. I can't decide."

Ignoring him Nike continued to speak to Alistair. "I am taking my brother back to Ostagar, do you understand?"

"Nike, you're not."

She whipped her head around toward her brother. He was looking at her with a pale tension that her heart told her was not all due to the wounds and horrors he'd suffered. He rested his bloody hands on her shoulders and gripped them gently.

"Nike, this is a very serious thing,"

"I know it is," she said. Looking into his eyes, knowing he still had no idea the rest of their family was dead- that his wife and son were dead- she felt a pain for him that was almost greater than her own. She could not find the courage to tell him, and wondered if that made her a craven coward.

"Then stop," he said gently. "If you try and abandon the Wardens before your duty is done they will kill you. You'll be hunted for the rest of your life, and not just by the Wardens. Their allies- including the King- take these things very seriously. These are oaths and treaties that span Ages."

Execution? Surely it cannot be that serious. They wouldn't dare, she thought, but even she recognized the delusional naiveté in it. Of course they would dare. The fact she was a Cousland, the fact that her family had been slaughtered and she'd been impressed into the Wardens very much against her will- none of that would matter. Not in the light of even a potential Blight.

Tell him, she thought then. Tell him about his parents, about his wife and his son.

But her tongue seemed to dry and wither in her mouth. She couldn't. He was already wounded, having just watched his entire group be slaughtered around him. She couldn't. Not now.

Not here.

"If you go just that way, you'll make it back to the path up to Ostagar," Alistair said to Fergus, when Nike found words impossible. "You should see the torchlight in only a few dozen yards."

"Thank you," he said, then looked back at his sister as he dropped his hands. It was too dark to see his eyes properly but she could feel the questions in that gaze. How had she come to be conscripted? Had Father tried to stop it? What precisely was she and this small group out here to do?

If he actually was thinking those questions he, like she, suddenly seemed unable to find his voice enough to speak them.

Instead he said, "Nike, I will see you soon."

Before he could move, however, she quickly gripped his arm.

Don't go. Our family is gone. We were betrayed by that spineless Rendon Howe. Everything we knew has been stolen. Your wife…your son…please don't leave me too.

"Take Holly," is what she said aloud. "When you're safe and with the healers send her back. She'll be able to find us."

Nearby, the mabari perked up as she heard her name. Nike looked at her, then took her big, broad, jowly face in her hands. "Get Fergus back safely, ok? His leg is hurt, so if he needs to, let him hang on to you."

Holly let out a low sound of understanding, then butted her head up under Fergus's hand as Nike stepped back a pace.

It was only a pace, but she felt now as if an entire continent, an entire world, separated her and her brother. She didn't move, only crossed her arms and clung to her own shoulders, holding herself still as she watched the man and the mabari go into the darkness.

You should have told him. He deserved to hear it from you, not from others. Not from cold strangers.

He was gone now, as was Holly, and she stood alone in the dark surrounded by blood and corpses and stared at by men whose eyes glittered in the dark, and whose false sympathy burned like fire.

In silence they continued on, leaving the carnage behind. She could feel the others still watching her and she hated them for it.

How had her life come to this? Mucking around in the Wilds in the middle of the night, with darkspawn potentially behind every tree? Family dead? Stuck in the Wardens like a bad secret where so much as leaving this pointless trek (vials of blood? Really?) to escort her wounded brother back to safety could earn her execution? It was madness. All of it.

They pushed on into the starless, close night. Alistair seemed to know where he was going, even in the dark. More than once he abruptly re-routed them, probably to avoid darkspawn. The third time this happened she grew irritated again.

"Aren't we supposed to be fetching vials of blood?" she asked him in a low hiss. It was the first time anyone had spoken in hours now. "How can we do that if you keep changing us around so we don't run into the darkspawn?"

"We'll get to them soon enough," he said. "Somewhere advantageous, and with fewer of them than there are of us."

She'd taken her bow out again and as the night went on the temperature began to drop. Her fingers were growing chill. Too much colder and they'd fumble if she tried to fire.

They reached a low ridge of rocks that lined the opening of a somewhat swamped wash. Rainwaters from higher ground had caused a flash flood here some days before, and it hadn't yet fully dried out. Seeing the thick mud and quagmire Nike suddenly gripped Alistair's arm.

"We should stop here," she said. "If we take strategic points around the ridge, we can wait for some darkspawn to try and cut through here. The mud will slow them down, and we can hit them high."

"How do we know they'll even come through here?" Daveth asked.

"We don't," Alistair said.

"It'll be light in a couple hours," Jory said, squinting at the dark sky. "We'll stick out."

"If you 'stick out' just because there's light then you are a poor hunter," Nike said. He blinked at her.

"Never said I was a hunter."

"Then I suggest you learn to be one quickly; we are hunting darkspawn after all," she said. "And if you have a better plan let's hear it."

None of the three said anything. After a long pause, Alistair nodded. "Up on the ridge then. We'll give it until daylight."

Jory let out a breath, sounding like a weary and impatient bull, but did not argue. Barely had Alistair spoken the words than Nike was up the ridge of rock and into the shadows.

Daveth watched her go, then leaned a bit toward Alistair. "Not afraid she'll try and take off back to Ostagar?"

"I can still hear you," she said from where she perched. She might have spoken just a bit too loudly, for somewhere nearby she heard restless wings rustle. Listening for a long moment she heard nothing more, and settled down into the niche she'd found, watching quietly as the men started up the ridge as well, taking various positions along both lengths of the muddy gully.

Sitting in the cold and the dark, the sounds of the men settling down as they took up position, Nike tried to concentrate on the fact this was just another hunt. It wasn't important that she was here hunting darkspawn instead of natural animals. It wasn't important that even touching the beasts risked giving her the Taint. Her wounded brother heading back to Ostagar, still unaware of his family's slaughter- unimportant. Her being trapped on threat of execution with the Wardens, her life no longer her own- irrelevant.

This was just another hunt.

Of course, her efforts to shove aside such huge and painful truths and focus laughably failed. The thoughts snared her mind like a fish on a hook and no matter how she tugged and yanked the hook sank only the deeper. It pulled her on a path she did not ask for and never wanted. Soon it would haul her out of the water altogether and she'd suffocate, if the fisherman didn't mercifully bash her head in first.

And just who was that fisherman? The Maker? Nike had never been terribly religious, but her belief in the Maker had always been there because her family had expected it to be. It had been taught to her the same as manners and decorum and she used it in much the same fashion- out of habit and expectation. Seeing her nephew and sister-in-law brutally slaughtered, abandoning her parents to the same, and now this…this unwanted yoke and chain- if the Maker were real He was a right bloody bastard and she wanted less than nothing to do with Him.

Minutes stretched into an hour. She alternately tucked each hand in her armpit to warm up her fingers so she'd be ready at the bow if the time came. The deep dark of the wilds had begun to thin, forms slowly taking shape around her as if they were fading into being. Dawn was not too far away.

As it crept closer she saw that across the muddy wash there was an old tree. A few sickly looking leaves and thorns still clung to its crown, but it was clearly dying. Gaps had appeared in its ragged wood hide, and stone moss had worked its way deep into these crevices. Tucked down and drowsing on one of its gnarled branches was a large raven. Doubtless, it was the source of the sounds she'd heard when she'd taken her perch.

Ravens were not small creatures, but this one was large even for their number. It had tucked the tip of its wicked looking beak down under one wing and had fluffed itself slightly due to the cool air.

Nike watched the bird as its outline grew stronger in the rising light, going from vague shape to detail to color bleeding through. It had just become true dawn, deep red and oranges started to flood over the distant hillsides, when it suddenly opened its eye and fixed her with it.

Nike stared at the bird, and it stared back, the single yellow eye she could see unshifting as it looked at her.

Then suddenly it took its beak out from under its wing and looked down the gully, feathers suddenly flattening as its attention was caught. She was already turning her head to follow its gaze when a soft whistle came from nearby. It was Alistair.

She could see nothing yet, but shifted her bow carefully to the ready and braced herself. Arrow set she slowly drew the fletch to her ear as motion in the distance became apparent. The raven took off in a near silent swish of its wings, and vanished into the thicker trees.

Out of the scrub, making no effort to remain concealed or silent, came the darkspawn. There were only three or four of them- a scouting party of some kind most likely. One of them was surprisingly small, but all were obscenely ugly. Gray pebbled skin that looked simultaneously mummified and putrescent; piggy black eyes above cheeks somehow both gaunt and doughy; broken yellow teeth like crooked chunks of bone jabbed without purpose into dark and stinking gums.

They headed down the wash, heavy hide boots slogging deeper into the stagnant wet and thick mud. They seemed unconcerned of leaving tracks or with their ease of motion. They moved like soldiers with a single-minded goal.

Nike caught a brief motion out of the corner of her eye and realized one of the men- it was unclear who- was shifting closer to the edge of the wash, trying to creep nearer to the beasts heading their way. Whoever it was, they were not being very careful, and a soft slip of dirt pelted down the edge of the ridge and plinked down into the quagmire.

The darkspawn may have disregarded mud, but they did not disregard this slip of dirt. The beasts halted and drew stubby, nasty looking swords.

Over the ridge of rock came Daveth, his own blade up. He had almost flanked the darkspawn but his impatience or his inexperience worked against him. Instead of striking behind them he ended up upon them from the side and nearly got a blade in his gut for his pains. As he fumbled back from the strike, trying to secure footing, Nike let fly.

Two of the beasts sprouted arrows, one in a throat and the other through a meaty cheek. The one with the throat wound glutted and gargled a wet bellow that sent black blood spraying. It tried to fumble forward, but its faltering steps were further hindered by the mud now nearly halfway up its shins. It fell forward on hands and knees, still spitting and gargling. The one hit in the cheek turned toward the blow, pawing at its face like a dog might paw at quills left behind by an angry porcupine.

Daveth, recovered, swung his sword and beheaded the gargling one. Now Alistair and Ser Jory were in the fracas, swords flashing. Nike, unable to shoot again without risk of hitting one of them, carefully but hurriedly clambered down to the edge of the ridge, staying to dry ground as she ran toward the melee.

Alistair turned just in time to give her an opening and she darted an arrow into the eye of the one who had been hit in the cheek- the only one now still standing. She was only a few feet away and the arrow sank in deep. The darkspawn beast flapped a hand toward Alistair, the message that it was dead not having yet reached all its limbs, then it crumpled. Alistair barely avoided being underneath it as it fell.

It was over. In all, it had taken less than sixty seconds from the dirt spill to the collapse of the final creature. Black ichor had deepened the mud into a heavy morass and all three men were panting, their boots making grotesque sucking noises as they moved back away from it.

The front of Ser Jory's tunic was smeared with the blood and as he saw it he reached up his free hand toward it, in the motion of a man eager to swipe away a venomous spider he'd just seen crawling on his chest. Alistair, in a surprisingly fast if clumsy grab, caught his wrist and halted him.

"Don't. Don't touch it. It's no danger on your shirt."

Jory looked at him, pale and clammy with sweat, then nodded. Alistair began to dig in the pouch at his side and drew out vials, handing one to each man. "Fill it, but don't touch it with your bare skin if you can help it. We don't need accidents."

He held out the final vial toward Nike, who looked from it to him as if he were offering her a soiled baby's nappy.

"Go on," he said in a soft voice that was probably supposed to be understanding and sympathetic.

He still thinks I'm afraid, she thought, and snatched the vial from his fingers before crouching down and gingerly filling it. Some of the ichor smeared on its side and in a fit of what she knew was childish petulance, she straightened, grabbed the tail of Alistair's tunic, lifted it and used it to wipe the ichor off the glass. The look on his face was one to behold.

"What?" she said, snatching the cork from him and jamming it home. "It's no danger on your shirt, after all."

Still gripping the vial she started back up the ridge, away from the mud hole.

"You are always a delight," Alistair said after her, though he sounded shaky. "I bet you're the life of every party you attend."

Ignoring him she reached level ground. The vial in her hand felt unpleasantly hot and almost throbbing; as if she had captured some kind of heart instead of just tainted blood. Eager to stop touching it she tucked it in her own pouch.

"Where are these treaties supposed to be now?" she asked without turning, the question directed at no one in particular.

"Not too much further," Alistair replied, moving up the embankment. He pointed toward the distance, much the same direction the darkspawn scouts had come. "We'll have to hurry. By afternoon I fear the horde will have it surrounded, if they keep moving as they are."

"Then keep up," Nike replied, and started that way without waiting for them to speak or even follow. The sooner they had those treaties in hand- if they even still existed- the better.